LuxArtAsia

Maison Moschino, the latest project from Stefano Ugolini of Hotelphilosophy, is a world where fashion is king and fairytales come true. Together with the Moschino creative team and designer Rossella Jardini, Ugolini has created a dream-like vision. Converted from an 1840's railway station in the heart of Milan, this new hotel features 63 guestrooms and two junior suites over four floors. The rooms, with names like ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, ‘Clouds’ and ‘Sleeping in a Ballgown’, feature bespoke and surreal designs.

It’s always interesting to see how an artist, who usually uses one medium, in this case animation, adapts to using a completely new one. Young Japanese Tabaimo has quickly made a name for herself on the international circuit, with her surreal and strangely beautiful film animations. In 2007, she made a splash at the Venice Biennale with dolefullhouse, featuring giant hands arranging doll house furniture before starting to frantically scratch walls to reveal bleeding human flesh. In 2008, her second solo exhibition in NY featured public convenience, a three screen work set in a spacious restroom reminiscent of a train station where strange things start to happen, like a women diving into a toilet or another one giving birth through a nostril. Her new work at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute (opening tomorrow) is very personal, disturbing and beautiful at the same time. The artist suffered from severe dermatitis and her afflicted hands used to impede her art-making, a sensation she describes as insects crawling under her skin. She’s adapted those feeling with vein and insects layout on paper, creating bizarre textured paper evocative of bruised skin and lacerated wallpaper. It is a macabre world, but aesthetically a beautiful, poetic one.

Raden Sarief Bustaman Saleh was the first Javanese artist to have followed his calling to Europe and to paint in the Western style. Born an aristocrat, he was the cousin of the Regent of Semarang in Indonesia and was recognised for his artistic gift at an early age, learning under the tutelage of the government landscape painter Antoine Payen. When Payen returned to Europe in 1826, the young Javanese artist joined him three years later. A life-long friendship with Ernest II (1818-1893), Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was crucial to his career as he was introduced to members of the European courts and prominent intellectuals and artists of the time. He became one of the greatest orientalists painters in his days, famed for his paintings of wild and ferocious animals.

Back in 2003 at the International Istanbul Biennial, the Korean artist Do-Ho Suh presented one of his large-scale fabric installations ‘‘Staircase (Installation for Poetic Justice),’’ a red ethereal fabric staircase suspended from the ceiling and running through two floors without quite reaching the ground. The artist is now revisiting the idea on a smaller scale and in a different medium. Working in residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Mr. Suh is creating a staircase in red threads laid over paper pulp. I met him recently and wrote this story for the IHT which briefly traces his career. I just love his work, and some of the prints at STPI are really beautiful.

Asia Art Archive and Para/Site Art Space present a talk on April 12 with Ai Weiwei and Vito Acconci. Both artists gained early recognition in their respective careers for their daring stunts in the art world. Ai was part of a key movement of avant-garde artists who were active during contemporary art’s beginnings in China, while Acconci was at the forefront of early developments in video and performance art in the US. The artists will discuss their work, share their experiences in fighting against convention, and discuss their recent collaborative project in Hong Kong - which will result in an exhibition at Para/Site Art Space. Should be really exciting. Check Para/Site’s website for further details: http://www.para-site.org.hk/

Four days, $60 million - Christie's Spring Asian Art Week results point to a surge of confidence among global collectors who continue to look for the best in Asian art. This was the auction house's 2nd highest total for Asian Art Week in New York with a 73% market share. Not every sale was a resounding success though. The Chinese Works of Art totalled $40 million, the highest ever achieved at Christie's New York, but the sale of Japanese and Korean art was a disappointment with only 63% of lots sold. Provenance remains the key attraction for many buyers - case in point the Arthur M. Sackler Collections sold 96% of lots.

A new exhibition featuring 50 pieces donated by Wu Guanzhong just opened at the Hong Kong Museum of Art and will run until July 4. These include Two Swallows, named by the artist as his most classic work, and Victoria Harbour produced during the artists first ever public demonstration, which shows that Hong Kong occupies a special place in the artists heart. The artist is considered one of the most important and innovative artists in the 20th-century Chinese art for the explorations and contributions he has made by blending the essences of the East and the West through his dialogues engaged in between oil painting and ink painting. Apart from the Two Swallows and Former Residence of Qiu Jin, highlight exhibits include Memories of Home, The Easterly Breeze Blows Open the Wisteria, Waterway, Reminiscence of Jiangnan, Mending Nets, and Leaving Youth Behind.


Hong Kong entered Wu's life some 60 years ago when the artist stopped over briefly en route his return by sea from Marseille, France, before changing for his homeward bound train. When he revisited the city in 1985, he was amazed by how it had transformed into a modern metropolis in just over three decades. From then on, he became a frequent guest. To tie in with the exhibition, the Museum of Art will organise a series of special lectures during the exhibition period.

Xu Bing’s new towering sculptural masterpiece ‘The Phoenixes” was unveiled at the Today Art Museum in Beijing. Consisting of two 28 meter long birds pieced together from construction debris gathered at the site of the new Beijing World Financial Center, the Phoenix Project will be on display, suspended from cranes in front of the museum until April 6. In addition to the outdoor installation of Xu Bing's phoenixes, The Today Art Museum will also host a document exhibition of sketches, reports and models providing insight into the artist's creative process. Created on his return to China after a prolonged stay in the USA, The Phoenixes is inspired by Xu Bing’s experience of the new Chinese society and the reality of the new Beijing that he found on his return. Xu Bing has devoted all his energies to realizing this work over the last 2 years. The work, which was commissioned by the Taipei-based auction house Ravenel Art Group, examines the realities of modern Chinese society and provokes such questions as what is real and unreal.

Christie's sale of Japanese and Korean Art didn't fair as well as one could have expected in the current boombing environment. The New York sale achieved $4.39 million with only 63% of lots sold  (69% sold by value). The top lot was a rare and important blue and white jar, Joseon Dynasty (18th century), which achieved $662,500, above its estimate. Park Sookeun, Two Seated Women (1964) also sold well above its estimate

Graham Sheffield, artistic director of London’s Barbican, is to become chief executive of Hong Kong’s HK$21.6 billion West Kowloon Cultural District. He will start his new job in mid-August and manage artistic choices and operations of the project. Sheffield is widely credited for the strong performance of the Barbican, Europe’s largest multi-arts center. He's already said that one of his priorities will be to cultivate an excellent network across the Mainland and the Greater China, putting Hong Kong at the centre of the scene and bringing Mainland visitors across to provide audiences at West Kowloon. To see a transcript of his Q&A with media go here

I got a sneak peak of Fairy Tales, an exhibition at Opera Gallery, which is opening tonight. The 25 works are not for sale, as they’re part of a private collection known as MaGMA, put together over the last 10 years by two private collectors. MaGMA consists mainly of Asian contemporary names, and has a good selection of big Chinese names like Zeng Fanzhi, Liu Ye, Wang Guangyi, Guo Wei, Yue Minjun, Li Shan, and Zhou Chunya, along with Indonesian artist Nyoman Masriadi and Singaporean artists David Chan and Justin Lee. The collectors have decided to present some of the artworks in portable diptychs especially designed for each picture. These stand on the floor, like partly opened books, making the works especially inviting. The works are also presented with a fairy tale narrative which closely mirrors the collectors’ lives. In the same venue, Opera Gallery is simultaneously showcasing their own in-house exhibition, Tales of China, which features works by some of the top names in Chinese contemporary art. This is certainly very interesting to anybody needing a crash course to understand the last 10 years’ art craze for Chinese art.

The first session of the Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art auction brought in $9.6 million,  exceeding a pre-sale estimate by nearly $2 million. A record was set for a Classical Chinese painting sold in the US when Bada Shanren’s Two Mynas on a Rock from 1692 sold for $2,994,500, compared with a $400/600,000 estimate. A new record for Chinese calligraphy sold in the US was also set when Calligraphy in Xing Shu (Running Script) After Zhong Yao's "Zhang Le Tie" also by Bada Shanren sold for $482,500 (est. $100/150,000). If this first sale is anything to go by, Sotheby's is going to get some stellar results this week in New York.

Go to a couple of shopping malls in Singapore and you've seen them all - it's pretty much the same brands popping up at regular interval. So it's always nice to see new-to-market brands opening stores here. Resorts World Sentosa has three new brands: American lingerie Victoria's Secrets, Italian jeweller Damiani, which did a small collection with Brad Pitt, and Italian classic menswear Canali. Interestingly Rolex found a spot located right next to the Crockfords Tower, the by-invitation-only hotel reserved for VIP high-rollers.

Raffles hotels, the Peninsula, Shangri-La — such names evoke images of impeccable service in luxurious surroundings, sometimes harking back to a bygone age. Asian brands have been gradually expanding to the Middle East and the Americas, and soon they will add one more destination to their offerings: Paris. By the end of the summer, Raffles and Shangri-La Hotels will each open their first European property in the City of Light: Raffles in the refurbished Royal Monceau, a stone's throw from the Arc de Triomphe, and Shangri-La in what was once the palace of Prince Roland Bonaparte, Napoleon's great-nephew. In 2012 the Peninsula will join them when it opens its first European property in another historic Paris building.
Why France? For Asia's top luxury hotels, the goal is to offer a familiar and trusted setting to Asian travelers while building brand awareness among Westerners.  Importantly, Chinese tourists are now outspending all other visitors in France on luxury goods — including high-end accommodation. Last year they overtook the Russians in luxury spending, representing 15 percent of all tourist spending in France, according to the VAT payback-services provider Global Refund. Chinese spending rose a whopping 47 percent, to €155 million; by comparison, tourists from the United States spent €64 million, up 1.9 percent. And Chinese are sticklers for brands they know. For the full Newsweek story

Glen Goie's sophomore film, The Blue Mansion, is really a social and political satire about Asian society disguised as an Agatha Christie-style whodunit potboiler. “I wanted to address the theme of patriarchy which is very important in Asian societies because, particularly now in the West, everybody is looking at Asian values, idealizing them; but that fails to look at the enormous cost that the patriarchal order has on the individual in terms of how he or she wishes to live his or her life,” the 48-year-old director told me in an interview for the SCMP. For the full story: http://www.scmp.com/

Ah, I miss the days when Sotheby's was actually auctioning in Singapore and previews gave you the feeling of walking into a museum. I went to their Singapore preview today but there just weren't that many pictures, beyond a handful of old South East Asian Masters and an entire wall of gliterring jewels. The Southeast Asian contemporary section only displayed six or seven paintings, including two by Masriadi, which was very disappointing. I had hoped to get a closer look at the unusual Putu Sutawijaya (lot 12), which at last doesn’t have men circling in the sky. I must have seen about 60 of those which was getting tiring. But his work ‘I Release and I Hope’ has arms outstretched in the sky under a flock of birds. While the composition is very horizontal, the grey and black outlines of the arms contrast nicely with the pale blue of the sky. Still I got a chance to see Jimmy Ong’s Farquhar Descends Forbidden Hill, a long charcoal on paper, which had already caught my eye in the catalogue. It’s a beautiful, peaceful landscape of what Singapore might have looked like when Farquhar first arrived. It’s a nice departure from the Singaporean artist’s erotic drawings, and shows how technically skilled he is.

Come end May, the Esplanade will put the spotlight on 19 Asian artists hailing from different disciplines in dance, theatre, music and visual arts. The new initiative, ConversAsians, is particularly interesting because it will go beyond featuring artists' works to delve deeper into their creative processes. The four-day event is targeted at producers, presenters, curators and artists who have a keen interest in the development of the arts in Asia and its artists. The new platform aims to move away from a traditional buyer-seller arts mart to allow attendees to gain a deeper insight into the artists’ vision and work. Some of the artists who will be present include dance doyen and founder of the renowned Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan (photo), Lin Hwai-Min, the up-and-coming Chinese composer Huang Ruo, and Thai dancer and choreographer Pichet Klunchun.

Seoul Auction will be holding a sale in Hong Kong on April 5th of contemporary art, which include pieces by Robert Indiana, Marc Chagall and Ron Arad, along with Asian contemporary works by Zeng Fanzhi. It’s quite unusual to see Hong Kong auctions selling western masterpieces, a sign perhaps that Asian collectors are moving beyond their familiar territories. For the first time at auction there will be an Eight sculpture by Robert Indiana, a monumental red and violet aluminium sculpture, measuring over 1.8 meters in height. Another highlight is Le Bouquet by Marc Chagall, a piece that has never before appeared at auction.

Since its founding in 2002, the Swiss watchmaker De Bethune has already developed nine different calibers including, most recently, one fitted with a silicon balance wheel — a first for a production movement. Its signature spherical moon, rotating on its own axis, exactly reproduces the moon’s movement in the sky.
Through this constant innovation, De Bethune has established itself as a serious watchmaking brand that seeks to respect horological traditions while developing new technologies and materials. Read this IHT story for more

The 19th-century French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, one of the greatest illusionists of his time, also applied his love of optical trickery to his first profession: clockmaking. Among the mechanical illusions that he is credited with inventing, one stands out: the mystery movement, so called because the hands of the clock appeared to be floating over a transparent dial. Luxury watchmaking brands in search of technical credibility are now rediscovering the charms of what was, until recently, a rarely used complication. Dior and Louis Vuitton are two brands that have come forward with new interpretations of Robert-Houdin’s invention. Read more

During the darkest days of 2009, resilient Chinese buyers helped to keep the Swiss watch industry alive. Now, as the industry greets economic recovery with a slew of new models, these customers are getting the recognition they have earned. The return to fashion of classic, ultrathin designs is more than a reaction to lean economic times. It is also a direct reaction to the tastes of the mainland Chinese. In recent months, Vacheron Constantin has presented the elegantly plain, wafer-slim Historique Ultra-Fine 1955 while Piaget has introduced its Altiplano, a watch with a wide 43-millimeter, or 1.7-inch face, but a case just 5.25 millimeters thick. IWC Schaffhausen, too, has revisited its Portuguese line, introducing a sportingly elegant note with the Portuguese Yacht Club Chronograph, while Girard-Perregaux has integrated a column-wheel chronograph movement into an elegant, modest-size case for its 1966 Chronograph. Read more

He is best known for his literature which was described as having “opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama" by the jury who awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000. But Gao Xingjian can also boast of being the only Nobel prize writer who has attained international recognition in another discipline: ink painting. I first met the multi-talented artist a few years ago in his Paris apartment.  He explained his aesthetic search for a path between abstract and figurative using the richness of ink as his medium.


This is what he told me "Some forms and expressions can evoke a vision not only for the artist, but also for the viewer. They can evoke an experience that one has already seen. I’m aiming for something that is neither representative nor figurative, but something evocative. Not in an emotional sense, but in the visual one,” adding “I try to detach myself from my emotion because the look is not emotional. So your look should be cold when you are painting, almost like a third eye as you distance yourself from your emotions.” He's having a new solo show at iPreciations and as you can see these mono-chromatic works clearly evoke feeling of solitude, as one get lost in nature. The back-and-white ink is a colourful world for the artist. “The ancient Chinese painters would classify the various tints of black into five groups (dark black, light black, black, dry black, and wet black), but this is too restricting. I can find 50 different tints of black depending on the brand of ink I’m using,” he explained. “When ink is mixed with water it becomes so fluid, one can create a richness of varied tones,” he said.

Gao began training in oil painting and sculpture under renowned artist Yun Zongying in the early 1950s. Yu recommended his student attend to the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, but his mother’s opposition to her son living a ‘bohemian life’ as painter sent the talented Gao on a literary career, though he continued to dabble in oil painting as a ‘hobby’. But a trip to Paris in the early 1980s with Chinese writer Ban Jin changed his life. Gao admits he turned to ink painting after setting his eye on Impressionist masterpieces. “Looking at the colours of the impressionist masters gave me a fascinating shock, but I also realized I could never attain their level. I could never be as good,” he recalled. So the artist decided to turn his attention to an art form that he felt had been largely ignored by the Western masters, while still trying to find his own path away from the traditional Chinese ink masters.